We’re close to finishing the podcast studio for faculty, and I’ve long been planning to use Skype for interview/remote participant recording. However, after hearing about Google releasing video chat for Gmail (more information at Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable) I have to wonder – will this be the new podcast recorder of choice? Or is there something else people like using I haven’t tried yet?
Thanks for taking the poll. If you have a solution that works well for you, or if I didn’t list your solution of choice, let me know in the comments!
This is an evolving project. If you have suggestions or recommendations, I’d love to hear them in the comments below the post.
In order to quickly compare features, price and other items of note for the many screen recording apps available, I’ve used extjs to build a sortable chart. To sort by any column, click on a header name. Other options, like grouping, are available when clicking on the right side of a column. There are several features I’d like to add to the chart, like turning grouping off and adding a search feature, but I have to balance time between developing a nice chart and reviewing applications. Bear with me on the slow development of the chart, and let me know what you think below in the comments.
I’ll start posting reviews once the chart is complete, starting with the most popular applications. I recently explained why I’m doing this and how I’ll be reviewing the applications if you’d like more info. Based on my reviews, your comments and our faculty response, I’ll begin recommending specific applications, and somehow indicate those apps on the chart.
Several sites and articles were of invaluable help in building this list of screen recording apps, including:
This is an evolving project, and I’m interested in your suggestions – feel free to leave comments below the article.
I have to admit, I have a vested interest in this project. We are in the final stages of putting together a podcasting/screencasting studio together for faculty, staff and student projects. I want to provide a tested workflow both for applications we make available in the studio and applications we recommend instructors use on their own. The intended audience (faculty members who shouldn’t be required to become technology experts) and intended purpose will drive how I evaluate the applications. In my upcoming reviews, I’ll focus on evaluating and testing several specific features and characteristics.
The Reviews.
Ease of use for non-geeks.
I don’t expect faculty to become technology experts – unless they want to, of course. Too often, it seems faculty find themselves in the position of being required to use a particular technology, which drives how they develop learning objects. Powerpoint is a good example – because the technology drives the development, we end up with a glut of slides with built-in themes, bullet-point lists and printed handouts. My belief and practice is technology should be implemented the other way around – faculty, as content experts, recognize a difficulty in teaching a particular skill set or course material, and look for a solution that may involve new technology. This way, the content drives the development, not the features and limitations of the selected technology. Because faculty should be empowered to create content and learning objects without slogging through help files and manuals, technology should be as transparent and easy to use as possible.
Convert and use existing assets.
Many faculty already have existing objects they’d like to build on, including Powerpoint presentations, videos and photos. The recommended screencast application should provide a bridge for faculty, allowing them to start with what’s familiar and branch out into new features.
One-stop shop.
I suspect this will be a deal-breaker for many applications I test. As much as possible, I’d like the recommended application to handle as much of the entire workflow as possible. I personally use several applications together when making screencasts – for example, I record audio and video separately. For faculty, however, I believe starting with one application is the easiest route. Don’t get me wrong – I heartily support faculty who wish to delve into technology and learn more than the superficial, official method; however, I recognize there are many who are not interested or don’t have the time, and wish to make technology as accessible as possible to as wide an audience as I can. Therefore, ideally, the recommended application will record, edit and publish/encode both audio and video.
Multiple encoding options.
Many faculty wish to distribute their developed objects through multiple channels – online, on a DVD, broadcast on the local educational channel and via a podcast feed, for example. The recommended screencast recorders should be able to handle publishing objects in multiple formats, accommodating as many distribution channels as possible.
The Tests.
Workflow – Record a YouTube video, a Skype interview and a Second Life session.
Screencast recorders can be used for many more things than demonstrating how to use an application. For example:
a Communications instructor can record a video of a speech and discuss the speaker’s communication skills
a math instructor can use a tablet to write math problems on the screen and incorporate them into a video
a Psychology instructor might record a Second Life session demonstrating a particular cultural phenomenon
a History instructor might create a time-lapse video of a particular Wikipedia article demonstrating how our understanding of events might evolve
an Art instructor might record a Skype interview with several museum curators, adding pictures or videos demonstrating the pieces discussed
or an English instructor might create a machinima-based presentation demonstrating the real-world applicability of grammar rules
Granted, most of these projects are fairly advanced, but they all start with a basic list of features – recording audio and recording video at a high frames-per-second rate. To test an application’s basic abilities, I’ll record a YouTube video along with my own audio commentary; to test an application’s ability to handle as many advanced uses as I can anticipate, I’ll record a short Skype interview and Second Life session.
Distribution – publish for online (.flv or .swf), podcast/mobile (.mp4), and DVD (high-quality .mov or .wmv).
After completing the above recordings using each reviewed application, I’ll publish them and compare file size and quality using the three most-anticipated distribution channels.
Have other suggested tests or features to evaluate? Let me know in the comments below.
This is an evolving project. If you have suggestions or recommendations, I’d love to hear them in the comments below the post.
I’m in the process of building a chart comparing features and characteristics of screencasting applications. It’s taking a while to build the chart, so I thought I’d list the apps below and begin asking people for recommendations for ones I missed. I’ve split the list up into three sections: Windows, Mac and Webapp/Other. Two notes of interest:
I did not include Linux apps, as none of the faculty or studio computers are currently running Linux. If I have time, I might revise the list to include Linux apps.
When adding applications to the list, I only picked … well, screencasting apps. This excludes programs with a lot of extra functionality, including my current favorite for building learning objects, Adobe Captivate. While apps like this do have screen recording features, they tend to be much more powerful and complicated for non-geeks. I’m sure I’ve offended someone out there, so I’ll explain what I mean in a follow-up post.
Several sites and articles were of invaluable help in finding screencasting apps, including:
In upcoming articles, I’ll explain why and how I’ll be evaluating the applications, build a chart for comparing features and describe the workflow I personally use. I also intend to publish as many reviews as I can, and publish a follow-up article identifying which applications I chose to recommend to our faculty and why.
I really enjoy reading Consumer Reports, reading table after table of comparisons for products I have no intention on buying. So now that I’m about to put the finishing touches on setting up the podcast/screencast studio (based largely on Leo Laporte’s setup for TWiT.tv), I was prepared to review several articles comparing the many screencasting applications and settle on the best for our use. Unfortunately, apparently no one has yet written such an article – the closest I could find are narrowly-focused, long-scrolling articles like TUAW’s Faceoff, sorely incomplete comparison lists like Robin Good’s Sharewood Guide, or simple lists of applications like those at Mashable or MakeUseOf.
All I want is a simple, well-organized chart that compares prices and features between as many currently-available screencasting apps as possible. Since this doesn’t exist, I’ll be developing one myself – hopefully at least one person besides me will find this information useful.
Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll begin building a chart for comparing information between screencasting apps, then writing evaluations. As I evaluate applications, I’ll update the chart with information and links. I plan to split the applications into three categories (Windows, Mac and Web-based), collect compared information into an easy-to-read chart, and provide links to full evaluations for each app. Some of the information I plan to compare includes:
Price
Record audio
Editing or annotating features
Export options & codecs supported
Limit capture to region
Record webcam
Convert Powerpoint/Keynote presentations
If you have a favorite screencasting app you use, or would like to see a particular feature included in the comparison, let me know in the comments below!
Sportscasters sometimes make sports interesting to watch with their instant replays, on-screen pen drawings and playback narratives. After watching some recent political speeches and reading articles like this one on FoundRead about politicians’ body language, I wondered – what if speech instructors could use the same sportscaster-style tools to critique speeches? Invite some students to play the part of the “sportscasters” and you have an assignment students not only enjoy doing, but contribute to the content of the course. Have different students participate each week over the course of the class, and you have a video podcast the class can publish. Here’s a quick example of what your class could create using Camtasia.
The magic sauce for creating this type of video is the ScreenDraw tool. To make this tool easily available, click on View > Annotation Toolbar in the Camtasia Recorder window:
After you begin recording the screen, enable the annotation tools by clicking on the ScreenDraw icon on the Annotation toolbar. This gives you access to several screen-drawing tools, including a free-form drawing pen, several shape tools, a highlight tool and an arrow tool, all with configurable widths and colors. You can access the different tools and options by right-clicking inside the area you are recording:
I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts on a wide variety of topics lately, getting ideas for how faculty can integrate podcast creation into their own classes. One thing I’ve noticed is how polished and professional some podcasts sound – since I want our faculty to be able to produce professional-sounding media, I’ve been trying to identify specifically what separates the professional from the amateur. While many things seem to play a part in that professional sound, one consistent feature I can easily teach and replicate is the use of music. Some podcasts use only intro and outro music, others use music to indicate section breaks, and still others play constant, faint background music. However, all professional-sounding podcasts using music share one thing in common – ducking or fading music behind the voice track(s).
We’re promoting Audacity for basic audio recording and editing, so I looked into how to achieve ducking in Audacity. While there are several ways to duck or fade music, the most professional-sounding method involves the use of the envelope tool, which fades the volume of a track to a constant low level, then fades back to the original loud level. It’s pretty easy to use once you’ve gone through the steps; since video is much easier to follow than text-based documentation, I whipped up a screencast demonstrating the envelope tool, which I’ve embedded below. Tell me what you think.
As an aside, I also used this opportunity to play around with some alternative video upload services. Out of all the ones I tried, I liked Revver’s embedded video object the best. It’s interesting to see how some video services use more compression than others when transcoding the .avi I uploaded into .flv. Here’s the services I tried:
Recently, I’ve been assisting instructors interested in offering podcasts to their students. Since many others write articles on podcasting basics, I won’t belabor those topics here (unless, of course, I get requests for it). Instead, I intend to share some tips on topics that I don’t see others covering, starting with building a music and sound effects catalog.
When used effectively, music and sound effects give podcasts a professional quality – introductory and “outtro” music, background music, pieces of music separating show segments, and sound effects all contribute to a podcast’s polish. In some cases, like the podcasts (or “netcasts”, as Leo likes to promote) offered by the TWiT network, music choice sets the mood for the show and helps establish a brand. However, it already takes so long to record and edit podcasts without adding additional audio that often people find they don’t have time to add that extra polish. With the right tools and resources, I’ve found I can collect and maintain an easily-searched database of podsafe audio, ready to drop in podcast episodes in minutes. Generally, the steps I’ve taken to build my podsafe catalog include:
Collect the music using Firefox and DownThemAll
Import music into MusikCube
Rate and tag songs as I listen to them
Prepare frequently-used songs with desired volume, fade and trim edits
This is a video I put together for a faculty update meeting to get people excited about using technology in classes, like podcasting. With some help from Todd Washburn of Weedkiller fame, I filmed 30 minutes of footage in front of chroma green fabric, added audio and video effects and cut it down to almost 2 minutes. Using a Max Headroom-esque video style made things easier – no need to worry about jumpcuts.
By the way, as a test, I’m hosting this video from my server using FlowPlayer. Our institution uses a hosted version of Blackboard which charges for disk space and bandwidth, so I am exploring ways of embedding hosted video, audio and PowerPoint resources into courses without using our host’s space and bandwidth. So far, I’m pleased with FlowPlayer, and am investigating other alternatives.
A friend recently had an interesting problem – he wants to promote the use of podcasts to instructors as a component of courses taught online, and identified the excellent, open-source Audacity as their Windows tool of choice. However, as he began writing documentation for installing and using Audacity, he realized many instructors would be immediately turned off by the complicated installation process required to set Audacity up for exporting projects as mp3 files – many instructors who could otherwise be taught how to record and save projects would not understand how to unzip LAME, copy the DLL file into Audacity’s folder, then point Audacity to the lame encoder. Instead of writing thorough documentation that would likely daunt non-savvy instructors, I suggested an alternative – creating our own installer. It worked so well, I thought others might benefit from the idea.
First, a word about licensing.
I originally wanted to provide the one-step Audacity/LAME installer as a downloadable file, but started reconsidering after looking into license issues. Audacity and LAME are themselves covered by GPL/LGPL and therefore are re-distributable; however, I can’t tell what the SetupStream license terms are, and the patent mess covering the mp3 format may prevent distributing a package that installs Audacity with built-in mp3 output. Since I can’t really tell, I listed the steps required to make your own installer, and you can choose how you use or distribute it.
Step 1
First, I downloaded the tools I’d need. Since I was creating a custom installer, I needed the zipped version of Audacity, not their installer. Additionally, I needed LAME and an installation creator with the ability to insert registry keys. After trying a couple install creators, I chose SetupStream – it’s easy to use, freeware and offers a wide array of features, including all those I need.
Audacity 1.2.6 – look under “Optional Downloads” for the zipped version
Step 2
Next, some preliminary steps: unzip Audacity into its own folder, then unzip the file lame_enc.dll from the LAME zip file into the the same folder that contains Audacity.exe. Install and start SetupStream, select Create New Setup and click Next.
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